Durang on Chekhov/Durang on Durang

Anton Chekhov

“I had the idea to write Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike a few years ago, when I realized that I was now the age that Vanya was (or seemed to be). And, like Vanya and other Chekhov characters, I started to reassess choices made in the past. I live in a stone farmhouse with my partner, the writer-actor John Augustine, on a small hill in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. I choose to live here for the quiet and the trees, and there is a small pond where a blue heron comes and sees what is available to eat. But I started to think to myself, what if I didn’t live here with my partner but with my adopted sister, and the two of us had spent 15 years taking care of our elderly and eventually incoherent parents. What if we never left the house we lived in as children, and felt jealous of our older sister, who was a glamorous stage and film star? She sends us money, but our lives feel empty and unexciting. What if my life had been closer to a Chekhov play?

By the way, I also have cherry trees around the house. About nine of them, I’d say. Very pretty two weeks a year.

My play is not a parody. It is set in the present day. Once I finished the first draft, I started to say to people, “The play takes Chekhov characters and themes and puts them into a blender.”  

--Christopher Durang

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike will be performed at PlayMakers through October 5, 2014. For tickets, call 919.962.PLAY (7529) or visit our website.

Christian Daly makes his PlayMakers debut

Christian Daly in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. Photo by Jon Gardiner

Christian Daly is making his PlayMakers debut in our Mainstage opener, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. He performs the role of Spike in this Chekhov-inspired comedy by Christopher Durang.

Christian Daly

When asked what he enjoyed about his first time on the PlayMakers’ stage, Christian responded, “My favorite thing about my first time at PlayMakers is obviously the people. It would be hard to find a more talented and humble group of actors, directors, and technicians. Not to mention the Paul Green Theatre is such a fun space to play in.” He loves working with director Libby Appel, the Artistic Director Emerita of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He says, “our director has such a maternal energy she makes the space feel so safe for myself and the other actors. Such a wonderful quality for a director!”

Christian Daly as Spike. Photo by Curtis Brown

The character Spike is a wannabe actor and Masha’s boy toy. Christian explains, “Working on Spike has been a rush if only because most of the time he is completely unaware of the consequences of his own actions. He lives in a sort of clown world, which in my experience quadruples the amount of freedom an actor has on stage.”

Christian, a proud graduate of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, was recently in Sanguine Theater Company’s New York premiere of Exit 27 and the Dutch indie film All Those Sunflowers, following on appearing as Romeo in Cygnet Theatre’s premiere of Joe Calarco’s Shakespeare’s R&J.

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike will be performed at PlayMakers through October 5, 2014. For tickets, call 919.962.PLAY (7529) or visit our website.

Meet "Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike" playwright Christopher Durang

Christopher Duran. Photo from lunerontheatre.wordpress.com

Christopher Durang’s plays include A History of the American Film (Tony nomination, Best Book of a Musical, 1978), The Actor’s Nightmare, Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You (Obie Award, 1981), Beyond Therapy (1982), Baby with the Bathwater (1983), The Marriage of Bette and Boo (Obie Award, Dramatists Guild Hull Warriner Award, 1985), Laughing Wild (1987), Durang/Durang (an evening of six plays, including the Tennessee Williams’ parody, For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls, 1994), Sex and Longing (1996), Betty’s Summer Vacation (Obie Award, 1999), Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge (2002), the musical Adrift in Macao with Peter Melnick (2002), Miss Witherspoon (2005), Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them (2009), and Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (2012).

Durang is also a performer, and acted with E. Katherine Kerr in the N.Y. premiere of Laughing Wild, and with Jean Smart in the L.A. production. He shared in an acting ensemble Obie for The Marriage of Bette and Boo; and with John Augustine and Sherry Anderson has performed his crackpot cabaret Chris Durang and Dawne at the Criterion Center, Caroline’s Comedy Club, Williamstown Summer Cabaret, and the Triad, winning a 1996 Bistro Award.

Chris Durang and Dawne. Photo from siegelpresents.com

In the early 1980s, he and Sigourney Weaver co-wrote and performed in their acclaimed Brecht-Weill parody, Das Lusitania Songspiel, and were both nominated for Drama Desk awards for Best Performer in a Musical. In 1993 he sang in the five person off-Broadway Sondheim revue, Putting It Together, with Julie Andrews at the Manhattan Theatre Club. And he played a singing Congressman in the Encores presentation of Call Me Madam with Tyne Daly at City Center. In movies, he has appeared in The Secret of My Success, Mr. North, The Butcher’s Wife, Housesitter, and The Cowboy Way, among others.

He has his B.A. from Harvard College, and an M.F.A. in Playwrighting from the Yale School of Drama. His numerous awards and fellowships include a Guggenheim, a Rockefeller, the CBS Playwrighting Fellowship, the Lecompte du Nouy Foundation grant, and the Kenyon Festival Theatre Playwrighting Prize. In 1995 he won the prestigious three-year Lila Wallace Readers Digest Writers Award; as part of his grant, he ran a writing workshop for adult children of alcoholics. In 2000 he won the Sidney Kingsley Playwrighting Award. Since 1994 he has been co-chair with Marsha Norman of the Playwrighting Program at the Juilliard School in Manhattan.

Adam Versényi, Dramaturg


Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike will be performed at PlayMakers September 17, 2014 - October 5, 2014. For tickets, call 919.962.PLAY (7529).

Special events for “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” begin today!

PlayMakers is opening its 2014/15 Mainstage Season with Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, the Christopher Durang comedy that enjoyed acclaimed Broadway and Off-Broadway runs and garnered numerous honors including the 2013 Tony Award for Best Play, Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play and the New York Drama Critic’s Circle Award for Best Play.

In conjunction with Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, PlayMakers is hosts multiple special events, starting tonight!

Below is a list of upcoming events:

• Sept. 8, 7 p.m.: “In the Wings,” presented by PlayMakers and the Durham County Library. Cast and creative team members discuss the play at the Main Library, 300 N. Roxboro St., downtown Durham;
• Sept. 10, 6:30 p.m. “The Vision Series-Directors in Conversation,” a behind-the-scenes preview with Libby Appel in the Paul Green Theatre;
• Sept. 15, 6 p.m.: a discussion with the director and cast at McIntyre’s Books, Fearrington Village, Pittsboro;
• Sept 17, 18 and 19, 7:30 p.m.: preview performances;
• Sept. 20, 7:30 p.m.: opening night performance;
• Sept. 24 and 28: free post-show discussions with members of the creative team;
• Sept. 27, 2 p.m.: open captioned performance;
• Sept. 30: an all-access performance for attendees with special needs, with sign language interpretation and audio description;
• Oct. 5, 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.: free post-show “Mindplay” discussions sponsored by the North Carolina Psychoanalytic Society.

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike will be performed at PlayMakers Sept. 17-Oct. 5. For more information and to purchase tickets, call (919) 962-PLAY (7529) or visit www.playmakersrep.org. Individual ticket prices start at $15. Tickets are also available as part of PlayMakers’ 2014/15 subscription packages.

Meet the Creatives: "Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike"

PlayMakers kicks off the 2014/15 Mainstage Season with Christopher Durang’s hysterical farce Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, that riffs on the tradition of Russian playwright Anton Chekhov. Not only did it win the Tony for Best New Play, it was honored with tons of awards and nominations from the New York theatre scene.

Libby Appel

We’re so excited about the team we’ve assembled for our production of Vanya, which includes both new and familiar faces. 

Libby Appel returns to PlayMakers to direct this production. She was last here during the 2008/09 Season directing The Glass Menagerie. Libby spent 21 seasons as artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. In 2010, she became only the sixth person to receive the Kennedy Center’s Stephen and Christine Schwarzman Legacy Award for Excellence in Theatre, which recognizes “lifetime achievement in theatre and unparalleled commitment to the future of the art form through teaching.” Not only does she have an incredible career as a director and leader, she has a rich history adapting the works of Anton Chekhov. She seemed like the perfect director to tackle Durang’s love letter/send up of Russia’s greatest playwright.

Designing the Bucks County estate where all the action of the play takes place is scenic designer Michael Dempsey. Michael comes to PlayMakers from Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts (PCPA) in Santa Monica, California. This is his first time designing for PlayMakers. Michael is the conservatory director and director of technical training for PCPA and has also designed for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Sacramento Theatre Company, Contemporary American Theater Festival, Syracuse Stage Williamstown Theater Festival and Off-Broadway.

Jan Chambers

PlayMakers brilliant resident designer Jan Chambers is creating the costumes for the show which range from the pedestrian to something straight out of a fairytale. You’ll remember her work on the set and clothes for last year’s rep of The Tempest and Metamorphose. Jan is a faculty member of the Department of Dramatic Art at UNC Chapel Hill, where she teaches theatre, scenic and costume design.

Peter West. Photographer: Kate Dale

The lighting designer for Vanya will be Peter West. Peter has a long-standing relationship with PlayMakers and has done the lights for many shows here over the years including: Blue Door, The Bluest Eye, Yellowman, Luminosity, Hobson's Choice, Uncle Vanya, Proof and Playboy of the Western World. West is based in Brooklyn, New York.

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike will be performed at PlayMakers September 17 through October 5. Subscriptions for the 2014/2015 season are on sale now and single tickets will be available in July.

More On What We Have In Store Next Season

By Joseph Haj, Producing Artistic Director

Joseph Haj

We are excited to open the Mainstage Season with the brilliant new comedy by Christopher Durang, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. Three siblings collide. Vanya and Sonia, who have spent their lives caring for the estate of their late parents, and movie star sister Masha who comes swanning back in true Chekhovian fashion. If you enjoy Chekhov, you’ll love it. If you hate Chekhov, you’ll love it even more. And if you don’t know a thing about Chekhov, nothing bad happens...it’s a hysterical ride.

Then our rotating repertory moves from the metaphor of the sea in The Tempest and Metamorphoses to that of the forest with Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods. Characters enter the woods pursuing their ambitions—and reckon with forces they never imagined and beyond their control in magical and dangerous circumstances, before coming out of the forest forever changed.  

Midsummer, one of Shakespeare’s most beloved comedies, is the theatre’s first “fairy tale” following lovers who escape to the woods and encounter a Faerie King and Queen, in a tale rich in music, magic and comedy. Sondheim’s musical masterpiece Into the Woods brilliantly imagines the lives of classic fairytale characters – Cinderella, Rapunzel, witches and giants – reminding us we need to be careful what we wish for. Performing them in rotation, sharing a scenic world, allows us to explore two plays, written 400 years apart, that use the forest as metaphor in similar ways, describing how we sometimes need to get lost in order to find ourselves.

Then we turn to Alice Childress’ Trouble in Mind. Written in 1955, it’s the story of a racially mixed cast rehearsing a new play with hopes of taking it to Broadway. Misperceptions and stereotypes abound as a veteran African American actress grapples with choosing between her chance to play the lead in a Broadway show, and the cost of compromising her principles. Crackling with the wit and daring of Clybourne Park, Trouble in Mind is an ‘edge of your seat’ comedy that asks hard questions and offers no easy answers.

Next, a classic from two master playwrights. Arthur Miller’s adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People. It’s bracing, electric and incredibly current. Set in a small Norwegian town where the town leaders have invested a significant amount of money developing public baths in hopes of drawing tourists to the area, a doctor discovers the waters of the baths have been contaminated by textile mills further up the river, and must be shut down. Expecting to be hailed as a hero, instead he and his family are ostracized for threatening the town’s economic viability. This play, originally penned in the 1880s by Ibsen, and re-told in the 1950s by Arthur Miller, still rings true today. 2015 is the centennial of Miller’s birth, so this production celebrates one of our major American playwrights with one of his rarely seen works.

And we’ll close our Mainstage Season with the Pulitzer Prize-nominated 4000 Miles. When 21 year-old Leo suffers a major loss, he seeks solace with his feisty 91 year-old grandmother. They infuriate, bewilder, and ultimately reach each other in this unsentimental look at the funny, frustrating, life-changing relationship between a grandson facing the rest of his life and a grandmother slowly forgetting hers. A keenly observed look at the sort of inter-generational relationship we rarely see onstage.

See you in September for this exciting season!

Joe Haj